BondEvalue, an electronic bond trading startup in Singapore, has raised US$6 million in Series A round of fund raising from a slew of investors, including MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia and Citigroup.

Existing shareholders Potato Productions, a company helmed by entrepreneur Lee Han Shih, and Octava, a Singapore-based family office, also joined the round.

This brings the total capital raised by BondEvalue to US$10 million.

BondEvalue will use the proceeds from the new round to increase its international members.

Also Read: What entrepreneurs can learn from Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from the French Open

The startup also announced a joint venture (JV) in Mexico to form a Peso bond exchange and represents the first local currency expansion by BondEvalue.

BondEvalue was established in 2016 to provide electronic bond trading and to make bond investments accessible to a wider group of individual investors.

The company’s proprietary technology and enterprise-grade blockchain enables BondbloX investors to buy and sell bonds in denominations of US$1,000 instead of the usual US$200,000, and through a public exchange where prices are highly transparent.

The platform operates on a B2B2C model and connects to the end investor via their bank or broker.

BondEvalue Information services brings innovation to bond price discovery, AI-based news, analytics, and delivers these services via mobile, web and APIs.

Last October, it received a Recognised Market Operator (RMO) approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to operate BondbloX Bond Exchange, the world’s first fractional bond exchange.

Co-founder and CEO Rahul Banerjee said: “We are focused on executing our mission of bringing bond investing to the so-called HENRYs (High earners, not rich yet), who hitherto were unable to buy bonds.”

Anvesh Ramineni, Managing Director at MassMutual Ventures, said: “Investing in corporate bonds has typically been out of reach for most retail investors in Asia. BondEvalue is changing that by bringing greater transparency and democratising access to the fixed income asset class.”

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Image Credit: BondEvalue

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Las week, we learned why building thought leadership was essential for your fundraising efforts. This week, we will focus on the ‘how’.

While every founder in Asia Pacific understands that they need to be a thought leader (check out the effort our contributors put in), more often than not, it is ad hoc.

Finding time to speak at (virtual) conferences, networking with journalists to be interviewed and build your your own fan base via LinkedIn and other writing platforms is a lot to juggle with the tasks of running a startup.

And it is this very juggling that makes most of them sound like a content marketing studio. They fail to realise that thought leadership is not just about your product and its features — it is a reflection of your thoughts put forth confidently.

This week, I would like to enlist some tips for you to keep in mind to build your own thought leadership strategy especially when you do not have personnel to take care of it.

What to do

• Thought leadership distinguishes you and your brand from others. Events, podcasts and blogs can help you build leads, future investors, and even increase consumer base. But bear in mind that it is a slow process and yields no instant returns. It is a consistent and long-term process.
• Its starts with you. As the founder you are the face of the company and should work on enhancing your PR and marketing skills. Freely share your views about the industry and what’s happening at your startup via your company blog, LinkedIn, Twitter or more. Once the startup grows, the founder can take a backseat, but don’t stop doing it.
• As your startup grows, it’s important to know who participates in where. Divide and plan all your thought leadership efforts. Slowly, a startup can involve its technologist, sales and market leaders, or even HR executives to share their company practices, product know-how, etc.
• Steer clear of product marketing. It should not be the thrust of your thought leadership. You never want to appear as just a salesman hawking his products. No one, after all, likes to be sold to. What people do appreciate, on the other hand, is having their problems solved.
• The major thrust of your thought leadership should always be market education, especially in Asia, where most consumer and enterprise tech industries are still relatively new (at least compared to Silicon Valley).

Where to start

• Start a company blog if you can. But let it not just talk about your products, but also about what’s happening at your company, how you make decisions, etc. This will help engage all your stakeholders.
• Join Telegram groups or communities and network your way with peers. The e27 Facebook community is a great place to start. You can not only share your views and tips but also learn from others and stay up to date with industry sentiment.
• Contributor posts at media such as e27, Inc42, Forbes, etc. Contributed posts are a good break from story pitch and press release and an easy way to earn bylines for key members of your company. LinkedIn is a great tool too and the best way for brands to put company updates out there.

Anyone can become a thought leader and benefit from the added visibility. All you need are passion, expertise, and honesty, says Muara Makarim, who has helped startups such as Shopee and Circles.Life at their PR and thought leadership game.

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BukuWarung, a fintech firm that helps Indonesia’s micro SMEs digitise their business, has raised US$60 million in Series A funding.

American VC firm Valar Ventures led the round, along with fintech unicorns Wise, N26, and Goodwater Capital.

Former GoPay CEO Aldi Haryopratomo and Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson, as well as partners from SoftBank and Trihill Capital, also participated.

This brings the two-year-old company’s total funding raised so far to US$80 million.

The fresh capital will be used to enhance the company’s tech and product capabilities across its core accounting, digital payments, and commerce products. They include building a robust payments infrastructure to solve deeper use cases for Indonesian merchants such as QR payments and financial services.

Furthermore, it plans to double its team size to 300 and triple its engineering and product teams across Indonesia, Singapore, and India, as well as remote teams in other locations.

Chinmay Chauhan and Abhinay Peddisetty (former executives at Carousell and Grab) founded BukuWarung with the vision to digitalise Indonesia’s 60 million MSMEs.

Also Read: BukuWarung raises strategic financing from Rocketship to help Indonesian MSMEs improve bookkeeping process

They launched an app for micro-businesses that could help them improve the bookkeeping process by tracking daily transactions, including cash flow, credit, expense, and sales.

The company also recently launched a Shopify-equivalent, called Tokoko, which allows MSMEs to create online storefronts and sell their products.

Over the last six months, BukuWarung claims to have recorded over US$15 billion worth of transactions and US$500 million in payments. The team size grew 5x to around 150 people over this period.

“BukuWarung is already a market leader in MSME digital payments growing in a cost-effective and sustainable manner since its inception. This investment will further help us build an operating system for MSMEs, creating a positive socio-economic impact across Indonesia as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Peddisetty.

“COVID-19 continues to expose the vulnerabilities of Indonesian MSMEs who remain a linchpin of the national economy. We have since seen the ecosystem rally between stakeholders — big and small – to accelerate the MSMEs’ digitalization by improving their operational resilience and market reach. From my experience, BukuWarung is not only building on such efforts but also emerged as one of the key actors accelerating this much-needed transformation,” added Aldi Haryopratomo, former CEO of
GoPay.

The company most recently secured an undisclosed amount of financing from Rocketship.

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MooVita, an autonomous vehicle (AV) tech startups based in Singapore, has raised multi-million dollar amount in a Series A round of investment, led by Yinson Green Technologies Division, a subsidiary of Malaysian energy infrastructure company Yinson Holdings.

SMRT Ventures, the corporate venture arm of SMRT Corporation, also participated in the round.

This investment marks Yinson’s first foray into the mobility space.

MooVita will use the funds to accelerate the development, commercialisation and international expansion of its driverless solutions — beginning with the deployment of driverless solutions for public transportation and the urban environment.

As per a press note, these plans are aligned with Singapore’s “Sustainable Singapore Blueprint”, which sets out to achieve a cleaner and greener transport system by 2030.

Also Read: Vietnam launches first autonomous vehicle

“With this injection of capital, we will focus on advancing our driverless technologies, building a fleet of driverless shuttle buses and safe on-road operations, expediting the deployment of the MooVita’s driverless public transport solutions across Asian urbanscapes, starting from Singapore and Malaysia,” said co-founder Dilip Limbu.

Established in 2016, MooVita is specialised in designing and deploying roadworthy autonomous vehicles in urban cities worldwide. It is currently developing a component-based driverless software solution, which transforms various vehicle types into versatile autonomous vehicles for multitudinous driving conditions and applications, such as first/last-mile transportation, logistic transportation, agriculture, and utility solutions.

Headquartered in Singapore, Moovita also has offices in Malaysia and India.

MooVita’s early investors include Pioneer Smart Sensing Innovations Corporation (a consolidated subsidiary of Pioneer Corporation), SEEDS Capital and GreenMeadows Accelerator.

According to Digital News Asia, the company was also the first to receive approval to test its autonomous vehicle in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.

“Our plan is to replace existing infrastructure and develop innovative business solutions in order to make transportation sustainable through the adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies. The co-investment into MooVita presents a wonderful opportunity to contribute back to the sustainable transportation infrastructure in Singapore,” commented Yinson Group Vice President Eirik Barclay.

“We are adopting a targeted strategy where we tap into our existing strengths in logistics solutions, energy infrastructure, and renewables; and focus on the geo-markets where we’re currently active. We believe that this approach will help us to build profitable, disruptive businesses, that meet the needs created by the global climate action agenda,” added Yinson Group Chief Strategy Officer, Daniel Bong.

According to KPMG’s latest Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index, Singapore holds first place for autonomous vehicle (AV) policy and regulation and second for infrastructure — surpassed only by the Netherlands — and is widely recognised as a global leader in AV development.

Some of the other AV companies currently active in the region include nuTonomy, Red Dot Robotics, and OpenSourceSDC.

According to data compiled by Tracxn, there are 10 smart car startups in Singapore as of 2020.

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Indonesian telemedicine “super app” Alodokter has announced that it has secured an additional investment from MDI Ventures, a subsidiary of Telkom group, and Samsung Ventures.

The size of the investment was not disclosed.

This deal takes place nearly eight months after the Jakarta-headquartered startup raised a funding round led MDI Ventures in November 2020 as part of its US$30 million Series C extension.

The health-tech firm will use the funding to further expand and develop new products.

Started in 2014 by Nathanael Faibis and Suci Arumsari, Alodokter provides all-encompassing digital health services that include reliable health content, access to general practitioners and specialists (telemedicine), online booking of doctor’s appointments at hospitals, medicine purchase through e-pharmacy and affordable insurance packages.

Also Read: Halodoc snags US$80M Series C led by Astra to expand its telemedicine platform in Indonesia

The firm claims it has more than 30 million monthly active users and more than 43,000 certified doctors across 1,500 hospitals and clinics on its platform.

Since 2019, Alodokter has raised significant investment from investors such as Softbank Ventures, Sequis, Golden Gate Ventures, Philips, Heritas and Hera Capital.

CEO Faibis said: “…Key focus areas going forward include technology innovation, increasing the talent pool, and adding new features and functionalities…By integrating our ecosystem with additional state-owned enterprises, we expect to provide tech-enabled healthcare access to more Indonesian patients.”

Donald Wihardja, CEO MDI Ventures, said: “Alodokter has a proven track record of growing their comprehensive healthcare solution. All the innovations, from telemedicine to insurance, have been developed to cater to Indonesia’s needs for accessible and affordable healthcare services. The funding from MDI will further extend the growth of health services through the potential collaboration with several BUMN entities in Indonesia.”

“With the increasing demand for the use of health services, this follow-on funding aligns Telkom’s mission to increase innovative products within the SOE environment and continues to be committed to providing solutions to millions of people in Indonesia,” explained Director of Enterprise & Business Service Telkom Group, Edi Witjara.

Previously, Alodokter had raised seed funding in 2015 and US$2.5 million in Series A led by Golden Gate Ventures in 2016.

In April this year, Halodoc, another Indonesian telemedicine startup, raised US$80 million in a Series C funding round led by local automotive conglomerate Astra.

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Image Credit: Alodokter

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UNObank receives digital banking license in Philippines

The story: UNObank has received approval from the central bank Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to operate a digital bank in the Philippines.

About UNObank: A company under Singapore’s DigibankASIA, it offers anyone in the Philippines to save, borrow, transact, invest, and protect their finances easily with speed and ease.

More about the story: The BSP has granted three digital bank licenses, two of which are conversions from previous bank licenses.

Tonik, another Filipino neobank, also received the license.

“The BSP’s vision and foresight to digitise the local banking industry is future-forward and apt because ultimately it will help align the Philippines as a modern banking center for the region,” says Manish Bhai of UNOBank.

Carousell ropes in former Razer executive as new CFO

The story: Carousell, a Singapore-based mobile listing service company, announced today the appointment of former Razer executive, Edwin Chan, as its Chief Financial Officer.

Also Read:  Ecosystem Roundup: Why SEA’s exits market looks bright

New role: He will oversee Carousell’s overall capital strategy, including corporate development, fundraising, as well as mergers and acquisitions.

Additionally, corporate controllership and accounting, financial reporting, investor relations, legal and compliance functions will fall within Edwin’s remit.

Gojek’s GoSend courier drivers protest over low incentives

The story: Drivers of Gojek’s delivery arm, GoSend, are planning to strike a protest today, according to messages distributed via WhatsApp groups. This was first reported by Kr-Asia.

The reason: GoSend is planning to cut incentives for deliveries by more than half the current rate.

More about the story: Yulianto, a GoSend drive and a spokesperson of the protest, said that the protest will run for three days in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Bandung.

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Autopair, an online automotive parts trading company in Thailand, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A financing round.

Summit Auto Body Industry, one of Thailand’s largest suppliers of automotive parts, led the round.

Prior to this, Autopair has raised US$500,000 in seed funding from KK Fund in 2018.

Autopair said in a statement that it will use the fresh capital to help approximately 1,000 independent automotive workshops digitise their work processes through its newly launched digital business management platform.

Additionally, it has also announced plans to expand into markets like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Despite the slump in domestic car sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on the industry has been offset by the corresponding increase in demand for car maintenance.

However, Autopair believes that independent automotive workshops have not fully capitalised on these opportunities due to high fragmentation and a reliance on traditional, inefficient operational processes.

Also Read: Carsome snags US$30M Series D to strengthen its C2B and B2C offerings

Founded in 2018, Autopair’s goal is to transform the automotive aftermarket industry via its online automotive parts trading platform.

Its SaaS offerings are ‘Smart Procurement’ and ‘Smart Workshop’ are its core features.  Smart Procurement provides a virtual inventory of parts, wholesale discounts, as well as a 90-minute contactless delivery of service parts at competitive prices.

The second product streamlines business solutions for calendar scheduling, tracking, managing labour efficiencies as well as inventory management and customer relationship management (CRM) tools for estimates and invoices.

The company has over 50,000 virtual stock-keeping units and its solutions are available in 29 provinces in the region.

In the past three years, Autopair claims to have recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 385 per cent.

Some of its clients are industry leaders including Bridgestone Corporation, Toyo Tires, Nitto Automotive, and Nankang Tires.

“I believe that with an uncertain future in uncertain times, the best strategy is to be part of the disruptive wave instead of standing against it,” said Kornkrit Jurangkool, President of Summit Auto Body Industry.

“Autopair has demonstrated its success in digitising the automotive aftermarket industry to date, and given our connections throughout the industry and ecosystem, we believe we can help drive Autopair’s business forward,” he added.

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wagely, a financial wellness platform that enables earned wage access (EWA) in Indonesia, has received US$5.6 million in a strategic round of investment, led by Integra Partners (formerly known as Dymon Asia Ventures).

Also participated in the round were ADB Ventures, PT Triputra Investindo Arya (one of Indonesia’s largest privately held groups), Global Founders Capital, Trihill Capital, 1982 Ventures, and Willy Suwandi Dharma (former President Director of PT Asuransi Adira Dinamika).

Also Read: Impact-tech investor ADB Ventures in talks to raise US$100M debt fund

The Jakarta-headquartered startup will use the capital infusion to accelerate the adoption of its platform.

Founded by Tobias Fischer (previously with Grab) and Sasanadi Ruka (formerly with Tokopedia) wagely gives employees access to their earned wages and financial education.

EWA is a concept wherein an employ can withdraw a part of his/her already earned salary before the payday. For example, you have worked from 1st-10th June, while payday is on the 25th. You can withdraw a part (say, 50 per cent) of your prorated salary for that month (10 days) before the payday comes.

This is aimed at reducing financial stress for millions of low- and middle-income workers, who struggle with unexpected financial expenses between pay checks.

wagely claims it serves tens of thousands of employees across many industries, including restaurants, factories, hospitals, and retail stores.

“More than 100 million Indonesian lower- and middle-income workers are living paycheck to paycheck and struggle with unexpected financial expenses between paychecks, which in turn impacts businesses with higher turnover, lower productivity, and more employee loans,” said CEO Fischer.

“Our workplaces are changing rapidly, especially since COVID-19 struck. Now the way people are getting paid is changing, too, and at scale. wagely provides a financial flexibility that is perfectly suited for today’s agile and progressive workforce,” he added.

Its financial wellness solution is used by companies such as British American Tobacco, Ranch Market, PT Mustika Ratu, and PT Kencana Energi Lestari.

“wagely offers our employees financial stability in times of uncertainty. It is incredibly important and a crucial step for the long-term resilience of our business,” said Wilson Maknawi, President Director at PT Kencana Energi Lestari.

“With no changes to our payroll process, wagely’s solution has proven to increase our business savings and helped our employees to avoid predatory loans while providing savings and budgeting tools that increase their financial literacy,” he shared.

As concerns over COVID-19 continue to grow, employers around the world, including Walmart, Pizza Hut and Visa, are turning to EWA solutions to reduce turnover, enhance productivity, and increase business savings.

Dailypay, a leading US-based EWA provider, just recently raised US$500 million and reached unicorn status.

Other noted EWA providers are US-based Payactiv, UK-based Wagestream,  Mexican firm Minu, and US-based Even.

Payactiv already counts more than 2 million users and has processed more than US$5 billion in earned wage access, highlighting the tremendous potential of the space.

Also Read: 1982 Ventures partners with 3 Korean investors to help country’s startups enter SEA

Daniel Hersson, Senior Fund Manager at ADB Ventures, commented: “wagely offers workers what they did not have before: a fair and accessible financial tool to help them manage life’s inevitable contingencies and emergencies, including those caused by climate change.”

Over 70 per cent of the Southeast Asian adult population is still underbanked and lacking access to affordable and responsible financial services, while many of the 140 million low- and middle-income workers (72 per cent of the Indonesian workforce) who live from paycheck to paycheck are exposed to the cycle of debt caused by overdraft fees, high-interest credit, and payday loans.

Taking this opportunity, the earned wage access solutions offer a sustainable alternative to employees. With the COVID-19 pandemic and increased levels of financial stress that is directly impacting employers, wagely has become even more important to employees and employers and is well-positioned to further support millions of Southeast Asians with its holistic financial wellness platform.

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Image Credit: wagely

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Thinking out loud: Are electric vehicles as sustainable as we believe? by Rachel Lau, Managing Partner at RHL Ventures

Although prices of batteries have significantly decreased, it has yet to reach the price-parity ratio suitable for mass adoption.

With the future of electrification on the horizon, existing traditional automotive manufacturers are converting and diverting resources to develop EVs. Together with new and upcoming companies that are either developing EVs and/or other related EV components such as battery swaps and charging stations, this space is heating up.

While Chinese EVs are focused on the hybrid model of battery swaps and charging stations, Tesla and other manufacturers in the West are adopting the Tesla model of building charging stations with high-powered piles.

How New Zealand-based Sustainable Foods is harnessing the power of hemp to produce meat products by Abhinav Mehra, VC and angel investor

Meanwhile, other proteins like pea, myco proteins, and lab-grown cultured meat are also showing growth in this region. To appeal to mainstream meat-eaters, plant-based meat products were developed to mimic favourite foods in familiar formats like burger patties and sausages.

However, as most of them remain processed packaged foods – questions are being raised on their nutritional value.One company in New Zealand, uses not only soy and pea but also hemp. The crop is rich in complex protein delivery and considered one of the most nutritionally complete food sources in the world.

Though Auckland-based Sustainable Foods is among the first to adopt it in the alternative meat industry.

Rise of fintech

Was 2020 the Amazon moment for fintech in Asia? by Sirish Kumar, founder and fintech expert

It is only a matter of time before mobile devices will become the default Point of Sale (POS) device for small business owners. The ubiquity of smartphones has expanded the ability to reach underserved communities easily. Today innovative embedded finance solutions offered by fintech that can leverage this mobile technology has eliminated the need for costly hardware and digitalise previously outdated payment acceptance points at a faster pace.

Fortunately, the transition is occurring at a time when moving online has never been easier. ASEAN governments have championed efforts to invest in core digital infrastructure in both rural as well as urban settings, where the vast majority of the region’s small and micro businesses are located.

From Dogecoin to Cardano: Should you take altcoins seriously? by Duckju Kang, CEO of ValueChampion

Just as there is a laundry list of cons, there are compelling arguments for bitcoin that institutions and everyday investors have been buying. The alternative to fiat, the bitcoin gold standard, and the potential to disrupt traditional banking services offer an attractive looking glass into the future.

So what about the almost 9,000 other altcoins out there?

New banking

Beyond marketplaces and motorcycles: Digital banks need to formalise ASEAN’s informal economies by Kaspar Situmorang, CEO, Bank BRI

Banks cannot rest on their laurels anymore and pretend their corporate and enterprise accounts will keep them afloat. No longer can they ignore microfinancing products due to high transaction costs. The super-apps are only a year into their digital banking war, but it won’t be long before they start sizing up bigger, more lucrative accounts.

Brick-and-mortar banks still have their legacy accounts and large, on-ground networks, as well as strong KYC experience to exploit. As licensed banks with high capital buffers to withstand economic shocks and decades of specialisation (as opposed to super-apps who roll out and shut down new verticals frequently), legacy banks have a lot of fight in them yet– if, and only if, they execute fully digital plays themselves.

Reimagining customer engagement for the AI bank of the future by Renny Thomas, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company

To remain competitive, incumbent banks must become “AI-first” in vision and execution.

If fully integrated, these capabilities can strengthen engagement significantly, supporting customers’ financial activities across diverse online and physical contexts with intelligent, highly personalised solutions delivered through an interface that is intuitive, seamless, and fast.

These are the baseline expectations for an AI bank– specifically when it comes to customer engagement.

By reimagining customer engagement, banks can unlock new value through better efficiency, expanded market access, and greater customer lifetime value.

In a post-COVID-19 world, Vietnam is SEA’s latest hotspot for venture capital investment by Duyen Tran, Public Relations at Loship

Emerging from the pandemic while other countries are still in the midst of the crisis is giving Vietnam an advantage. The country’s startup ecosystem has been transformed from the second-least active to the third-most active among ASEAN countries, trailing only Indonesia and Singapore.

Also, profiles of investors making deals in Vietnam are increasingly diversified. If the majority of deals were from Singapore and Japan back in the 2017-2018 period, the market now is extremely vibrant with the participation of several investors from different parts of the world such as South Korea, China, even the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region. Many of them have made investments in Vietnam for the first time. Local investors are also active, participating in roughly 30 per cent of deals.

SME and startup growth

How tech can help smaller brands scale in SEA by helping them maintain customers’ loyalty by John Jess, CEO and founder of Stash

Tech innovations created to troubleshoot everything from labour-intensive marketing campaigns to the messiness behind multi-market rewards programs tend to not only be expensive but difficult to customise and manage as well. It is like handing an infantry soldier a tank and asking them to drive it into battle with no prior experience.

That is why tech tools need to evolve to keep up with the needs of smaller businesses. I am the founder of Stash, an incentive tech startup that’s changing the way businesses keep their customers loyal and committed.

We have been pioneering the forefront of the tech revolution with a suite of software products that include, among others a mobile-based platform that brings together over 1,000 reward partners onto a single screen.

How founder-CEOs can setup their startup for a successful IPO by Sophie Chiu, VC Investor, AppWorks

This piece of article is more written for growth stage founder-CEOs. However, if you’re an early-stage founder, I believe this article can also shed some light on what is ultimately valued the most in the sometimes arcane process of filing for an IPO.

Trust is what helps companies earn long-term loves in the public market. It’s a playing field with big guys that have already proved their sustainability, building layers upon layers of trust as each quarter passes.

Trust is cultivated not only through data (a result of management and operation), but also through market reaction. This means, executing a good or even strong IPO is indeed very important because the trust is then solidified from day one.

How diversification of business models is helping SMEs’ post-pandemic restructuring by Benjamin Wong, co-founder and CEO of Transwap

While globally it seemed to be that we were all in the same choppy seas, over the span of a few months, if not weeks, it was apparent that not all businesses were on board the same boat. The differences in the treatment to SMEs was glaring; Interest rates were slashed to new record lows with Central Banks channelling greater efforts into printing money.

The scale at which monetary interventions took place resulted in seemingly optimal financial conditions of the market and yet many companies are still suffering the repercussions of the whiplash brought about with the onset of the pandemic and. When it comes to funding, however, SMEs in the Southeast Asian region do not have access to the lion’s share but instead are at the mercy of the shorter end of the stick.

Building your startup culture

Startups should celebrate failures. This is how to keep the experimenting culture alive by Sagar Chaudhary, marketing and PR Manager at Chinaccelerator

In the startup world, things move at a rapid pace and ideas alone do not bring success. Success requires implementation and the right implementation process requires different business experiments in order to test and validate those ideas.

Experimentation can be as small as tweaking the font on a website or as big as pivoting the entire business, as long as these are steps towards a predetermined goal.

Why it is time to reinvent The Agile Manifesto to answer challenges of a remote team by Cliff Berg, founder of Agile 2

Organisations today have embraced agility as a strategic imperative. For many, the Agile Manifesto is one of the sources of guidance on how to achieve agility. Yet, the Agile philosophy strongly favours working with others in person. This manifests through the “Agile team room” and the preference for face-to-face communication.

But these preferences are not backed by any research or evidence: they are assumptions of those who crafted the original Agile ideas and the various practices that evolved from those ideas.

It turns out that collaboration in an Agile team room is actually less than in a more traditional setup.

Smaller brands should have that option too. That is why I’m highlighting some of the ways businesses can scale sustainably and intelligently in 2021, to make the most of their digital transformation.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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More than US$300 billion was raised through IPOs worldwide in 2020, including record numbers of issuances in the US last year despite a sharp economic downturn brought on by the pandemic. A large portion of such issuances was via special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which are publicly traded investment vehicles created to merge with an existing company to bring it public.

According to Goldman Sachs, SPAC IPOs have raised a total of US$78 billion across 244 transactions globally in 2020. This represents a remarkable five-fold increase from the year before.

Closer to home, Southeast Asia’s most valuable startup Grab is also set to list on the Nasdaq via SPAC Altimeter Growth Corp at an estimated valuation of US$40 billion.

The sudden boom in SPAC IPOs was more notable given the tepid IPO markets in the years leading up to the pandemic. Companies were trying to stay private longer as venture capital and private equity money was abundant. The rapid renewal of interest in public equity capital raises the question of whether “staying private for longer” will become history.

Public valuations for startups, especially within the tech sector, is at a historic high with a median IPO priced at 24x sales in the year 2020 (a fourfold increase from the preceding twenty-year average).

Such lofty valuations are attractive for the typical SPAC target – young, loss-making, with no clear path to profitability, but are reminiscent of the dot-com bubble. The sustainability of these trends has major implications for the financial markets and thus warrants a more sobering view of SPACs.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Will SPACs sound the death knell for IPOs in SEA?

How it works

To evaluate the SPAC model, it pays to first understand how one works. A SPAC typically begins life as a team of experienced financiers (often referred to as sponsors). The sponsors leverage their reputation to raise cash in an IPO, then take up to two years in search of private companies to merge and bring public.

Along the way, it issues shares, warrants, and rights to parties that do not contribute cash to the eventual merger, thereby diluting the value of its shares. If investors eventually agree to a proposed merger, the SPAC redeems the majority of its shares from the public market, issues new shares to its sponsors or to third party private investors (PIPEs), and finally merges with the target company. The remaining public shareholders, sponsor(s), and PIPE investors all own a portion of the post-merger company’s equity.

A key risk of SPACs comes from a characteristic inherent to the design of SPACs: dilution. A recent Stanford study found that, on average, SPACs retained only 66.7 per cent of the cash they raised in the initial IPO at the time of merger, after compensating the sponsors and early investors.

Such common practices provide great returns for early investors but leave a gaping dilution hole which is proven to be correlated with poor post-merger performance. Few exceptions exist in the market, yet many SPACs are skyrocketing on the slightest rumours of a deal.

The enigmatic nature of SPACs and their targets’ ability to bypass rigorous IPO due diligence have helped them avoid public scrutiny and thrive in a market where behaviours depart from fundamentals and are driven by the fear of missing out. As market sentiments cool, and the crowd comes to realise the actual enterprise value of a SPAC, share prices typically plunge – posting negative returns.

Another danger stems from the first – the way in which the majority of SPACs are currently structured gives rise to two sets of non-overlapping investors with different, often opposing incentives. The ‘early’ investors who bought into the SPAC at the time of its IPO primarily hedge funds and some private equity firms tended to exit at the time of merger to lock in positive returns.

‘Later investors’ tended to hold shares through the merger and suffer from poor post-merger returns in the short and medium term. Of the 89 SPAC IPOs that have completed mergers between 2015 to June 2020, the median return was a disappointing -36.1 per cent compared to the average after-market IPO returns on the Nasdaq in the same period.

Also Read: Traveloka in talks for a merger with Peter Thiel’s SPAC to go public: Report

Why would anyone invest in a structure that collects cash, looks for a company to take public, and then allow those who invested the cash to exit?

Historically, sponsors have not been very influential in the growth of the post-merger company. If a target company is promising, why would sponsors and early investors not commit in the same way a private equity firm controls a portfolio company? Unlike in a successful traditional IPO where the majority of investors would hold a long position, most SPAC IPOs have a significant portion of investors who are looking for a quick return on their investments. This calls into question the notion of ‘targets benefitting from their sponsors’ experience and resources’ that many sponsors tout.

SPACs are not necessarily a ‘cheaper’ way to go public. If shareholders bear the full brunt of the dilution inherent to a  SPACs’ designs, the cost of raising funds through a SPAC would far exceed that of a traditional IPO, which includes a 4-8 per cent underwriting fee plus a price premium at public offering, which averaged 18 per cent in 2019.

Who is it for?

Dangers aside, SPACs can still be effective vehicles to raise capital for young and truly innovative companies that may otherwise be unable to scale and grow. The pandemic has ushered in the start of another tech revolution as multiple industries are forced to change. With VC funding reaching record levels in high growth areas such as healthcare, remote work, and e-commerce, the need for SPACs will continue to rise in the future.

In Southeast Asia where ECM/IPO activity has been slow, SPACs can lend credibility to regional startups to tap capital markets. The key to success lies in (1) high-quality sponsors and (2) sound governance – quality sponsors can provide the network, mentorship, and experience necessary for companies to reach their potential, while good governance ensures that a post-merger entity continues to thrive.

Take the Grab-Altimeter Growth Corp partnership as an example: the SPAC merger will give Grab’s founder Anthony Tan 60.4 per cent of voting rights with a mere 2.2 per cent financial stake.

The arrangement resembles that of such companies as Google and Facebook, where a dual-class share structure have allowed founders to continue driving their companies’ visions. While there are potential downsides, such efforts to align incentives are a welcome change in how SPACs operate.

Investors reacted to the early to mid-phase of the recent pandemic-driven exogenous shock in a predictable way. With levels of business uncertainty high and interest rate expectations low, the TINA (acronym for ‘There is no alternative’) effect took hold in financial markets.

Also read: What does Peter Thiel-backed Bridgetown’s IPO mean for SEA’s startup ecosystem?

Investors piled into crowded assets (typically growth stocks such as SPAC-mergers) irrespective of fundamentals because other asset classes offered worse risk-adjusted returns. However, with strong economic recovery in sight and interest/inflation expectations set to rise, the allure of the TINA trade is fading rapidly.

Investors now see opportunities in other parts of the market, and it is hard to believe that the enthusiasm for SPAC IPOs will remain. Without a fundamental shift in how SPACs operate – to align incentives and minimise dilution, SPACs will remain unattractive.

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